THE LIVING DESERTS OF SOUTHERN AFRICA
The author of this book, Barry Lovegrove, is a professor emeritus at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, an A-rated and award-winning scientist who during his career specialised in evolutionary physiology, a branch of science that studies how living things adapt to their environment. The author explains that the term ‘adaptation' has in the past been abused and overused, used to explain every trait that differs between species in different habitats.
Thanks to new technology, evolutionary physiologists can determine whether these differences are truly adaptive or merely co-incidental. As the South African-born scientist Lewis Wolpert explained in his book
The Unnatural Nature of Science, science is often counterintuitive, the opposite of common sense or casual observation, which is why scientists need to do the research to support their theories.
